TECHNICA HOUSE

This office building was constructed in Yushima, Tokyo, as a new sales base for Audio-Technica Corporation, a company with world-renowned advanced technology and market share. The site makes up an L-shape, wedged between a main street on the southern side where there is a row of large and small buildings, and a human-scale town that spreads out on the northern side, so some architectural arbitration was required in consideration of the different scales of the town. To achieve this, the "component" outline of the various different functions that make up precision audio parts was applied to the design, and an attempt was made at establishing a visual response between the unique CI expression of the building and the surrounding town. The plane structure consists of a compact "side core" on the eastern side of the site, and an L-shaped office block.The cross-section consists of office zone that rises up between the public approach level and the top floor residential section. There is an atrium between the first and second floors, which make up the reception zone, including the entrance hall, recording studio and presentation room. Above that, the third and fourth, and sixth and seventh floors contain office space without columns (standard floors). A large conference room with a foyer is contained in the fifth, intermediate floor.Furthermore, there is a spacious penthouse on the open-roof terrace on the top, eighth floor.The exterior consists of a façade that directly expresses the cross-section structure of the interior functions to the outside. The aluminum louvers and glass cubes that protrude out from the exposed concrete gate-shape form on the southern face along the main street give an expression of "depth," and the ribbon windows on the northern face give the expression of "shallow," with dispersion and no depth. By doing so, the intention is to give a contrast between the front and back.